Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 250X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (approximately 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 250X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (about 45%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.